A Storm is Coming: Rhaella Targaryen's POV
by SansaLyannaArya
Summary: My first story, so please review. Rhaella Targaryen's life through her point of view. Disclaimer: I do not own A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones, I just enjoy filling in its gaps.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

All her life, Queen Rhaella Targaryen had worried.

When she was very young, she worried about small things. Like her name, for instance. Rhaella loathed her name. It sounded as if someone had mashed the sound "ray" and the name "Ella" together, creating some lopsided monstrosity. When she first learned her letters, she decided to write her name and present it to her mother as a gift. The maester who taught her hadn't bothered to teach her how Valyrian names were supposed to be spelled, so for her name day that year, Rhaella's mother had gotten a spotted piece of parchment with the word "Rayelleh" written in childish script on it.

Her mother had smiled at her and accepted the ruined parchment graciously, despite the fact that the two serving girls present had to try to repress their laughter. But then her eyes misted over, and she started talking to someone who wasn't there. One of the serving girls ushered the princess out, and Rhaella followed without question. Father had said she wasn't supposed to bother Mother when she got milky, as Rhaella herself referred to it in her mind.

"My daughter gave me the most wonderful gift, Robert," the little princess heard her mother say as she was ushered out of the room.

Once, when she asked her mother about her name, the Queen told her daughter that her sister's name was Rhaelle, and when they were girls they had promised to one another that if they ever had daughters, they would name their first after each other. "That was before they married her off to Lord Baratheon," she said, spitting with disgust.

"What would you have named me if you hadn't made that promise to Aunt Rhaelle?" Rhaella said, scooting closer to her mother.

Her mother silent for a long time. Not in a way that suggested she was trying to think of an answer, but rather that she had once known the answer, but had forgotten it, and was now searching for it. "Oh," she said after a long time, "Daenerys."

Princess Rhaella repeated the name, liking the shape of it on her lips. _It is a queenly name, _she thought to herself.

As she aged, however, Rhaella began to worry about other, more important things. Fire, death, power...her brother's insanity.

The Targaryen princess was as surprised as anybody when her brother went mad. He did let off certain telltale signs when he was young, but she easily dismissed them as over eagerness. A year older than his sister but a foot smaller, Aerys knew he was to be king, and relished it. Too young to grow a beard on his own, he would cut off a horse's tail and tied the hair around his head with a string. For his crown, he gathered fallen twigs in the Kingswood and twisted them together with even more string. With his crown and his beard, the young heir to the throne would prance around the royal grounds, declaring himself king of Westeros.

"That's stupid," his sister would say. "You're not Father."

Aerys whipped his head around, his eyes narrowed. Then broke out into a smile and shouted with glee, "You're right! I'm not Father! I'm better than him! ALL HAIL KING AERYS THE SECOND!"

Rhaella flung the book she was reading aside and snatched the beard from her brother's chin. "GIVE IT BACK!" he shrieked. Aery's crown fell off as he chased his sister up the stairs of the Red Keep. Reaching a high wall, Princess Rhaella flung the bunch of horse hair into the sea, her brother not far behind her.

"There," she said, turning towards him. "It's gone. It's gone and it will never come back." Her brother sank to his knees and cried. Rhaella resisted the urge to put her arms around him and apologize. Mother told her that princesses never apologize. Ever. Instead, she ran back and fetched his crown from the steps and tossed that into the sea, too. "_Kings _don't wear twig crowns," she yelled at her weeping brother. "_Kings _wear golden crowns. You will wear a golden crown, and so will your son, when he succeeds you."

Similar incidents had occurred many times before, Aerys doing something his younger sister thought stupid or weird and Rhaella retaliating by shoving him around a bit. That particular event, however, was the worst she could recall, and from that point on, the young heir to the throne had acquired this air of slight paranoia about him. He stopped playing anywhere near his sister, and no longer wore crowns made of twigs and beards made of horse hair.

But, whether it was about her name or her brother's madness, Rhaella Targaryen had always had this sense of worry, of anxiety about her, like there was a storm coming, a massive one, and it would bring with it something terrible and powerful.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

The smell of smoke awoke her.

Rhaella sat up, breathing heavily. She'd been having a nightmare: a huge black dragon stood in the middle of what seemed to be a fighting pit, roaring and breathing fire. A strange-looking man had been trying to kill it, stabbing it repeatedly with a spear and speaking a language the Targaryen princess could not understand. In the dream, she had silver hair like her own, but wore a strange dress made of a material she had never seen before, and her actions and thoughts had not seemed to be her own. Her only thought had been to save the massive black monster, thinking it her child. Just as the dragon had killed its attacker, she stepped in front of it, calling out its name. _Drogon! _The beast turned, and a jet of flame assailed her. Then she woke up.

For one terrifying moment, Rhaella thought that it had not been a dream at all, that it was real. But, as she looked around her room, she saw no dragon, and sighed with relief. The last thing this world needed was a dragon on the loose.

She glanced quickly at the fire in her fireplace, wondering if it was the cause of the smell, but it was a serene as ever, crackling lightly. All the same, she called for a maid to put it out. As soon as the maid was gone, Rhaella began to pick her room apart, searching for the source. She looked in her drawers, in all of the corners, and even under her bed before realizing that what she was doing was stupid. Blushing, she threw on her robe and went to her window to check and see.

The sky was filled with foul, dark smoke. Rhaella's eyes widened, and she craned her neck to see if she could catch a glimpse of the source. Alas, the complex walls of the Red Keep obscured her view, and, cursing under her breath, she exited her room.

The door to Prince Aerys's room was open. The crown prince himself was sprawled on his bed, a book open in front of him, probably a book about dragons, his latest obsession. Perhaps his incessant droning on the subject had caused Princess Rhaella to have such a horrible dream.

Praying that she wouldn't be noticed, Rhaella hunched over and tried to tiptoe past her brother's door. It was no use. Aerys spotted her.

"Where are you going?" he asked, closing his book and carrying it with him to the doorway.

Rhaella straightened, seeing no need to hunch when she was already spotted. "Nowhere," she told him haughtily.

"Wrong," her brother said, narrowing his eyes. "You're going somewhere. You're _always _going somewhere. Where?"

Flipping her sleep-mussed hair, Rhaella replied, "There's smoke. I'm going to find out where it's coming from."

As soon as the words slipped from her lips, the princess regretted them. Her older brother's eyes brightened, and he stepped out into the hallway. "I'm coming with you," he said. "Where there's smoke, there's fire."

"Obviously," she answered, rolling her eyes. "So?"

"Dragons breathed fire," he replied, as if she was stupid.

"I know that!" Rhaella snapped, and turned on her heels, walking briskly away from him. Aerys struggled to keep up, towing that huge book of his. The princess led her brother through the halls of the Red Keep to the outmost walls of the castle. And that's when she saw it.

Standing on top of a high wall, Rhaella could see that a whole street was on fire. Its name, she could not say. It was close enough to the wall that she could see the people scurrying below, the flames licking the sky, spitting out embers. Her chest was seized with horror, paralyzing her so that she could do nothing but watch the terrible scene below her. What had happened? Why was this street suddenly all aflame?

"Someone's locked the doors!" her brother exclaimed gleefully, coming up behind her and pointing to a tall building. Without moving another muscle in her body, Rhaella turned her eyes towards the direction he was pointing. To her horror, he was right: some cruel soul had locked the doors on what seemed to be a brothel.

The sight of the whores inside pounding their fists onto the window and screaming for help made Rhaella break free of her horrified daze. Turning to a guard in a red and black cloak behind her, she asked, "What's going on? Why isn't anyone doing something to help?"

The guard's facial expression did not change as he answered her. "Some clumsy peasant caught his house on fire, early this morning. His neighbors couldn't quench it in time to prevent it from spreading to the rest of the street. The City Watch is doing all that it can."He was silent for a moment, then, remembering his manners, added, "My Lady."

Rhaella narrowed her eyes. She hadn't seen any gold cloaks scurrying alongside the peasants in the street. "I didn't see any of Lord Dayne's men in the crowd. Aren't you going to do something?"

The young guard turned his face straight ahead."Your Grace, that is not my job. My job is to stand watch and make sure no one gets through these gates without the approval of your grandfather, King Aegon."

"So you're here to make sure the people who need us don't bother us with their _petty _problems, is that it?" Rhaella hissed, taking a step towards him.

He turned his face towards her, looking extremely uncomfortable. "My Lady-Your Grace-,"

"Rhae, come look!" Aerys's voice squealed from behind her. "The peasants are burning!" Immediately, the princess bristled. Her name was bad enough as it was; the last thing she needed was idiots chopping off parts of it to make it easier to say. As soon as her anger had passed, however, she realized what he had said.

Slowly, Rhaella turned around to face her brother.

His cheeks were flushed with excitement, his violet eyes shining with ecstasy. A twisted smile was on his lips as he watched gleefully as the peasants below suffered. His eyes kept returning to the young whores in the brothel, screaming as the fire melted the pretty flesh from their faces.

The book he'd been carrying had fallen from his hands, lying on the floor forgotten. Rhaella crossed over to it and picked it up. The book had fallen open to a page depicting the Field of Fire, displaying a picture almost as gruesome as the tragedy below. It showed Balerion the Black Dread burning hundreds of the soldiers who had showed up to fight underneath the banner of the Rose or the Lion. They wore heavy armor instead of light silk, but they, too, burnt like wood. _But that was different, _the princess told herself. _They rode to oppose my ancestor, Aegon the Conqueror. He burned them because he had no other choice: they stood in his way of conquering Westeros. _

And then she realized that it wasn't so different after all. Whether you were a common whore or a trained knight, your flesh burnt just as easily. Fire cannot distinguish between a lowborn farmer and a king. It will burn them both just the same.

The princess felt her stomach twist, and she closed the book, carrying it back to her room, away from the monstrosity below.

From that day on, Rhaella Targaryen had feared fire just as much as her brother adored it.


End file.
